


The Fear of Losing You

by SwanFloatieKnight



Series: The Great War [4]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Escape, Exhaustion, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, No Man's Land, Prisoner of War, Soldiers, Trench Warfare, Western Front, World War I, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:02:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29097720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwanFloatieKnight/pseuds/SwanFloatieKnight
Summary: Merlin loses his patrol in no man's land.Gwaine feels guilty.Arthur refuses to believe Merlin is dead.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: The Great War [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983064
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	The Fear of Losing You

**Author's Note:**

> definitely not inspired by "All Quiet On The Western Front", at least in parts XD

A/N: I posted this fic on Ao3, and on Ao3 alone. If you read this on any other website or platform, please consider that I did not consent to this.

* * *

Gwaine had brought him the news only minutes ago, and Arthur was already raging. “Why did you not go back and look for him, for fuck’s sake?”

“Do you honestly not think we did all that was humanly possible? In our situation?”

“Well, why then is he not here with you?!”

“Damn it, Arthur, we lost him! You have been out there, too! In no man’s land! You know how it is!” Gwaine stared at him, now almost furious himself. “If there had been anything we could have done for him, we would have! He’s our friend, man! But we only have one life to lose, too! No need to uselessly risk it! If there had been a trace of him, we would have followed it!”

“It cannot be! There must be something somewhere!” Arthur’s fist hit the crooked table that Percival and Elyan had built a few months ago out of old wooden boxes. “You don’t just lose a person on patrol!”

Gwaine looked at him doubtfully. “Arthur, you know how things are. Merlin wouldn’t be the first, people do get lost on patrols. This happens. This is war. And after a direct hit there just isn’t anything left of you that could be considered a trace.”

“Are you trying to say that Merlin is dead?”

“For fuck’s sake, Arthur, we are at war! This is the front line! The Germans are right over there, shooting at us day and night! Of course he might be dead!”

“He might as well be alive!”

“But we do not know this!”

“Just like we do not know if he is dead!”

The two men stared at each other for a while, anger sweltering in their eyes. Then Arthur exhaled and it was like the fire in his eyes extinguished. “It is – I am sorry, I know this but…” He ran a hand through his greasy hair.

Gwaine dropped his gaze. “I am sorry, too. I should know – I mean, it’s Merlin. He’s special to you.”

Arthur only nodded, tears glistening in his eyes. Gwaine was tactful enough not to mention them. He reached out for Arthur’s shoulder in comfort.

“And who knows, maybe you’re right. Maybe he really is alive.”

Merlin had been scared when he had lost his direction. Of course he had been. Deathly fear had taken hold of him as soon as he had lost his orientation – and how easily could you lose your orientation in this empty landscape riddled with shell holes that looked all the same in every direction… Every time a flare went up he had to duck down, deep down into a crater, praying that somehow, he would find his way back to his group, or at least back to the trench, the right trench, before the sun was up. He was crawling for his life –

Then, he heard the voices. They were raw voices, the voices of soldiers, and for a second he thought that he had found his group, that Gwaine and Lancelot and Elyan would show up behind a hill and wave at him and tell him to stay closer next time and to watch out and –

These were not English voices he could hear through the thick night air. And as far as he understood them, they weren’t French either. Angry, threatening hisses in the darkness that were definitely too close.

They were Germans.

_“Ruhig! Da war was.“_

_“Was meinst du?”_

_“Vor uns!”_

_“Sicher?”_

_“Sei doch still, Mensch!”_

For a second, Merlin’s heart stopped. His thoughts were racing. What should he do? He couldn’t shoot them, he couldn’t even see them and they were too many. As soon as he started shooting they would kill him. But what else could he do?

He pressed his body into the cold mud, trying to become invisible, to become one with the ground, begging for the earth to swallow him, to hide him from their cruel eyes, but then a flare shot up and he could hear their steps, the soft clinking of metal as they came closer. And closer. And closer

And in the light of the next flare he was staring into the dirty faces of three Germans that pointed their guns at him mercilessly.

Merlin wasn’t sure how he kept on breathing in that moment. He wasn’t even sure how he managed not to pee himself because he was scared as hell in that moment. Adrenaline shooting through his body, his brain screaming at him to run, yet his legs unable to move – in retrospective he was relieved that he did not run, they might have shot him if he only so much as moved. But he stood as still as a stone as the Germans stared at him and he stared back.

For a moment they seemed to be nearly as scared as he was. Then they realised that he was alone. And they were three. And Merlin was so not going to see the light of day again.

 _“Na sieh mal einer an._ _Ein Engländer.“_ One of them grinned mischievously _. “Hände hoch, du Schwein!_ Hands up!”

Merlin’s shaking fingers dropped his rifle. He did not understand all the insults and instructions they hissed at him, he just kept his head down, his hands up and followed them as discreetly as possible. And while he and the Germans made their way back to the German trench his racing thoughts were circling around just one name: Arthur.

They had gone through two years of hell together. Arthur had always been at his side. They were comrades, And whatever Arthur might feel towards him, Merlin knew that he loved Arthur. And they needed each other. They needed the other’s chatter, their meaningless jokes, their comforting smiles. He could not leave Arthur behind. Whatever happened, he had to stay alive for him.

They had shot the German trenches to hell the day after Merlin had disappeared. Arthur had hated this attack with every fibre of his body, but he could do nothing against the orders from Army Command. If Merlin had been captured he was probably dead by now. There was no way that the Germans had managed to take him behind the lines, and if he had been in the trenches during the attack his chances of survival were slim. He was not important enough to the Germans that they would look after him, see that he stayed alive when they themselves were struggling to get through this hell.

Arthur was slowly, but certainly going mad. Not mad as men usually went mad in the trenches, this was an entirely new level of stress for him. He had never thought that he could become so fond of a sassy country boy, but here he was, and the thought of Merlin missing, maybe dead, maybe not was driving him crazy. His heart was aching day and night for Merlin’s comforting presence.

His men had been trying to cheer him up at first, but soon they came to the conclusion that there was nothing they could do for him. So they let him be, and while Arthur was relieved on the one hand he also missed their quiet presences at the edge of his consciousness. He missed them, even though they were still here, with him, next to him. But he missed Merlin more, and his grief for him took up all room in his wounded soul.

What hurt most though was that he had known what Merlin meant to him. He had known it for so long, and never really told him. And now it might be too late.

Why did it have to happen now? He had received leave only a few days ago, he would go back to England in a week, and Merlin was missing. What if he was still missing if Arthur came back? What if they found him while he was at home? Arthur had always felt strange about leaving his comrades behind when he went home, but this time it was a new anxiety that filled his mind when he thought about his leave.

The next night Arthur tried to write down his thoughts about Merlin, put them into a letter and send them home so he could leave them there until after the war. But when he sat there, the dim light of a petroleum lamp barely lighting his little table, his mind went blank. It was as if Merlin had never existed, all that was left was a feeling like a soft glow deep inside his heart, like a memory.

‘He is dead,’ was the only thought that suddenly shot through his empty brain, ‘he is dead now, and I haven’t told him. Even though it was obvious we felt the same.’

Then he put his head on the table and wept. He wept for hours until he fell asleep, and when he woke the sheet of paper beneath his cheek was damp and someone had wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. The petroleum in the lamp had burned out.

The person who felt most guilty about Merlin’s disappearance though was Gwaine. He had led the patrol in the night when Merlin had disappeared. He blamed himself, even though his comrades tried to convince him that it wasn’t his fault. It was nobody’s fault. They were at war. These things happened.

Still, it was enough for Gwaine to keep him awake at night. When two days after Merlin’s disappearance he was once again just staring into the emptiness unseeingly, trying to blend out the heavy fire as well as the ache inside his heart, Leon came to him.

“Gwaine…”

Gwaine stayed perfectly still, he even tried to breathe as deeply and regularly as he could.

Leon sighed. “I know you’re not sleeping. But it’s okay if you don’t want to talk. I just wanted to tell you… I mean, you certainly know this already but this is by no means your fault, and nobody thinks it is. Nobody is blaming you.” He reached out to carefully pat Gwaine’s shoulder. “And it probably doesn’t help you right now… but we all have those comrades that we could not save. We will all have to live with our own guilt. But right now, all we can do is try to keep it away from us. We won’t make it through otherwise. And that’s all that matters, right? Making it through.”

With a final pat he got up again and left. Gwaine waited another minute until he took a deep breath and turned around to bury his face in his pillow. Yes, Leon had only told him again what others had told him before, what he had been trying to convince himself of for days now. Yet Leon’s presence had managed to comfort him. This man had something about him that made Gwaine feel…

Something about him made Gwaine feel at home.

Merlin had no idea how he was still alive. Frankly, it was a miracle. After one especially heavy explosion everything around him had collapsed and he had passed out, not expecting to ever wake again. An unknown amount of time later though he had regained consciousness and dug himself out of the buried shelter that had been hit by an English grenade. His whole body was shaking and he was biting the inside of his cheeks until he drew blood just to keep himself from breaking down. But he had made his way out and now he was standing in a German trench that looked – empty? Abandoned?

There was only silence, and it was ringing loudly in his ears, feeling like enormous pressure on his eardrums. Had he ever heard such a deafening silence since he had gone to war? Was he deaf? Was he dreaming? Had he died and this was his strange vision of an afterlife?

Merlin shook his head to get the last crumbs of dirt out of his ears and hair while biting his fingers. Slowly, the normal rumbling sounds of gun fire, the sounds of the front line, came back to his ears. No, this was real, he was here and the trench was empty. Maybe the Germans had fallen back due to the massive fire they had been under. Maybe they had thought him dead when he had been buried alive and not bothered to look after their prisoner. Maybe this was his luck.

Merlin could only guess that the English had not had enough reinforcement to hold the line and therefore had fallen back as well. It happened too often, on both sides. If his side had taken these trenches he would be safe now. But wishing didn’t help.

Slowly, Merlin crept forward. He was already close to the foremost front line, if only no Germans would find him now, not now, when he was so close – well, so close to no man’s land. Merlin took a deep breath that nearly made him retch. The stench of death was as present as always. Merlin gulped. He mustn’t lose his concentration, not now, when he was offered such a chance to escape.

Merlin tried to ignore his spinning head when he heaved his somehow far too heavy and too light body over the edge of the trench. He felt out of it, what was a bad sign, even though it was hardly surprising. But his only way out of this mess led forward. Back into no man’s land.

He had to keep his head down, look for shelter. Merlin crawled on and soon found a deep shell hole half filled with dirty water into which he dropped. Down there on the bottom, feet buried up to his ankles in the icy mud, he caught his breath. At least he had made it out of the German trench. That was good. Now all he had to do was keep going.

Which was easier said than done. There was barbed wire in front of the British trenches that he would have to find a way through, and there were snipers watching out for German patrols, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. For now he had to go on.

With forced patience Merlin made his way through no man’s land, crawling from crater to crater. The adrenaline in his veins was the only thing that kept him going, but by the time that the British line finally came into view Merlin could feel this last resource of his strength dwindle as well. Yet he could not allow himself to give up. Not now. Not when he was so close to Arthur already.

Somehow, he made it through the barbed wire, scratched and torn he crawled on through the mud, keeping his head low as not to get shot by his own men. When he was close enough that he thought they could hear him he started calling, calling for help, begging them not to shoot, telling them he was British, and really there were not shots, but also his voice was dry and hoarse and nobody answered. Desperately Merlin crawled on, his arms and legs shaking from more than just fatigue, his heart pounding, hardly daring to breathe.

He reached the trench, pulled himself over the edge and fell down into the mud. A soldier who had been sitting nearby shrank together.

“Oi, where did you come from, mate? Bloody hell! Scared me to death.”

Merlin knew this voice, he knew it, but he couldn’t remember who this man was. He tried to get up, to say something, anything, but all he could do was moan and cough. Awkwardly, he turned onto his back and tried to sit up, but his arms gave way under the meagre weight of his starved body.

“Are you all right? Do you need help? Are you wounded?”

The soldier now got up, a torch flashed, blinding Merlin. He blinked a few times, then closed his eyes. It hurt his pounding head too much.

“Fuck’s sake, it’s Merlin! Leon! Elyan! Come here, help me! It’s Merlin!”

The torch went out again, Merlin felt a strong pair of hands grip his shoulders and that he was being pulled. It hurt his broken ribs, he gasped, but all he managed was a half-choked cough. Then there was dim light surrounding him, and the blessed faces of Leon and Elyan hovering above him, like saints, like angels appearing from the darkness that was clouding the edges of his vision.

“Where – Where’s Arthur?” he finally spluttered, but before he could hear their reply his tortured body finally decided that it now had enough. Merlin passed out.

“They have fond Merlin! He’s alive!”

Arthur jumped up from his cot. “What? Where? When?” He instinctively grabbed Elyan’s shoulders and it took all his willpower not to accidentally strangle the poor man in his tight hug full of relief.

“Calm down, Arthur, please, I…” Elyan took a deep breath when Arthur finally released him. “He is alive, but he’s definitely not fine.”

Arthur sobered up in a second. He knew how war went. Merlin was probably wounded, maybe deadly so. The sudden outburst of joy inside his chest died as quickly as it had been lighted.

“Where is he now? Can I see him?”

Never had Arthur been happier that Elyan’s sister was a nurse than right now when she led him through the crowded rooms of the field hospital. The smell was horrid as usual, the air thick with the stench of blood, pus, death and disinfectant. When he had first been to a military hospital here at the front Arthur had puked. By now he was used to it.

Merlin was lying in a clean white bed, his slender frame buried beneath a woollen blanket, his pale skin nearly as white as the sheet he was lying on. His ribs were bandaged, as well as his head. He was sleeping, but the sharp lines of deathly fear were still engraved in his face. He groaned softly from time to time.

Arthur slumped down on a chair next to Merlin’s bed. Carefully, he took his sweaty hand into his own. Mud was still covering his skin and stuck under his fingernails. Merlin’s hand was fever warm and so terribly thin…

But he was still alive, he had made it through, now Arthur would make sure that he would also make it out of this hospital bed alive. His thumb traced the lines of Merlin’s bones and knuckles beneath his skin, as in an attempt to comfort his friend, let him know that he was there, that he would look after him. This time he would not abandon him.

After all, he had to tell him something.

Something important.

Something with love.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please leave me a comment and Kudos! :D


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